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Broadband Outage in Metro Panama Irritates Customers

Thousands of Cable Onda broadband internet customers took to Twitter to vent their frustration over a prolonged outage that began Saturday afternoon in the Panama City metropolitan area and lasted more than 12 hours into Sunday morning. The outage also left an unknown number of ATMs unable to reach their servers.

The outage began around 3:00 p.m. when Cable Onda acknowledged unidentified problems that were affecting multiple locations.

I hope Cable Onda will give us [extra] megs or a free month for its serious mistake.

By 8:00 a.m. Sunday, the storm of complaints had subsided as internet, TV, and telephone services were being restored. But contrite Cable Onda’s public apology did little to appease customers demanding a discount on their monthly bill.

We regret the inconvenience this situation could have caused, and we reiterate our commitment to continue working to serve you the best way possible.

It remained unclear what type of “electrical problems” caused the outage or whether the outage occurred at a high-capacity backbone or a network access point. The outage also affected an unknown number of ATMs that could not communicate with the servers.

Some ATMs were out of service because of telecommunication problems with Telecarrier, La Prensa reported Saturday evening. Telecarrier, which merged with Cable Onda in 2009, provides enterprise-level network infrastructure, IT, and backup services.

Fixed Broadband Market Share in Panama

Cable & Wireless

%

Cable Onda

Cable Onda has been gradually expanding since it absorbed Telecarrier in 2009. In 2010, Cable Onda acquired Advanced Communications Network, which held about 2 percent of the market, as a wholly owned subsidiary.